Is Middle-earth Real?

Is Middle-earth Real?

ANSWER: Middle-earth is real in the sense that the name “middle-earth” is simply an ancient name for our own world (the world of men, within the context of a cosmology that envisioned closely connected worlds of men, gods, elves, dwarves, giants, and the dead). When people ask “is Middle-earth real” seek for “evidence of a real middle-earth” they are undoubtedly looking for information on whether J.R.R. Tolkien really based The Lord of the Rings on true historical or prehistorical events.

So far as we know, Tolkien did not simply fictionalize an ancient story. It’s all made up. But it is made up in such a realistic way that the Middle-earth he describes comes alive just as if the story were written about fictional characters in World War II or the Napoleonic Wars. In Letter No. 151 Tolkien wrote “Middle-earth is just archaic English for οικουμένη, the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact just as it does, round and inescapable….” In another letter, No. 294, Tolkien wrote:

Middle-earth …. corresponds spiritually to Nordic Europe.

Not Nordic, please! A word I personally dislike; it is associated, though of French origin, with racialist theories. Geographically Northern is usually better. But examination will show that even this is inapplicable (geographically or spiritually) to ‘Middle-earth’. This is an old word, not invented by me, as reference to a dictionary such as the Shorter Oxford will show. It meant the habitable lands of our world, set amid the surrounding Ocean. The action of the story takes place in the North-west of ‘Middle-earth’, equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. But this is not a purely ‘Nordic’ area in any sense. If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford, then Minas Tirith, 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence. The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about the latitude of ancient Troy.

His most definitive explanation may have been written in Letter No. 211:

I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in ‘space’. However curious, they are alien, and not lovable with the love of blood-kin. Middle-earth is (by the way & if such a note is necessary) not my own invention. It is a modernization or alteration (N[ew] E[nglish] Dictionary] ‘a perversion’) of an old word for the inhabited world of Men, the oikoumenē: middle because thought of vaguely as set amidst the encircling Seas and (in the northern-imagination) between ice of the North and the fire of the South. O.English middan-geard, mediaeval E. middenerd, middle-erd. Many reviewers seem to assume that Middle-earth is another planet!

So, to answer the question, “Is Middle-earth real?” Yes, Middle-earth is real but the stories are complete fiction. The geography used in the stories is also complete fiction. There is no historical riverland that looks like the vales of Anduin. The stories of Middle-earth are adventures in the imagination. But they are indeed set in “our world”.

See also

Is Middle-earth A Country or A World?

Is Middle-earth An Island or Continent?

Is Middle-earth Supposed To Be Midgard?

Where On Earth Was Middle-earth?

Where Did J.R.R. Tolkien Find the Name ‘Middle-earth’?

How Long Did It Take to Create Middle-earth?

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